I ordered a few things from a retailer on Friday and was pleasantly surprised to find out that whilst their next day delivery charge was £9.95 they also deliver on Saturday or Sunday also for £9.95.
It’s not a cheap delivery charge, but there is a standard 3 day delivery available for £5.95, so it really is a case of picking the service you want and paying the price. In this instance I opted for the Saturday delivery so that I don’t have to wait in one day next week. Convenience costs and I was happy to pay for it.
What was most interesting however is that there was no price differential between choosing a next day weekday delivery and choosing a next day weekend delivery. The service was via DPD and as is always the case I got a notification to the DPD app letting me know what time to expect my parcel.
With so many people out at work all day and some not having a suitable safe place for parcels to be left, weekend deliveries strike me as an eminently sensible option. Of course on some marketplaces it might be tricky to offer a Saturday delivery date, but it should be easily doable on your website.
Logistically, it makes no real difference to you if you ship something and the courier collects from your warehouse on Friday for a Monday delivery, or if they collect on Friday and delivery on Saturday or Sunday. All that’s needed is the software to offer the service to your customers and for you to pick a price.
Do you already offer named weekend day deliveries or does your courier deliver at weekends anyway (Royal Mail and myHermes both deliver on Saturdays). Would you charge a premium price or would you cost it the same as a next weekday delivery?
4 Responses
Hi Yodel Home deliveries include Saturday as standard and have done for ages. You also get the same notification regarding which number you are, always works for me in my area. I don’t want to be paying 9.95!
also Hermes come to me on a Saturday and I never pay extra for a Saturday delivery.
We offer Saturday and Sunday delivery with DPD for £10, weekday delivery we offer free of charge. No one hardly ever takes the weekend delivery from us.
We have tried it before but still had people not in and then trying to claim it was our fault! One of our specialist couriers that we have to use is also less than good at actually delivering on a saturday…. replying that they dont offer a ‘guaranteed’ service.!!! When the customer has just paid extra for this they aren’t best pleased and we end up out of pocket. Stating that the service isn’t guaranteed doesnt work… people either dont read that or dont care as they will just demand their money back anyway!
For us it’s an extra hassle that really doesnt make alot of difference.
I just had a delivery from myhermes this Sunday, I didn’t pay any extra for it so I can only presume they work 7 days a week as standard or they had a few others to deliver round my area that had paid extra. It was from a private ebay seller so not a business.